Archive for February, 2011

After a lot of enhancements on the fun front, we thought it was about time to do some work on the more serious tools Phixr offers. As a result, the Color Balance / Levels tools got some overhaul:

Color balance is now done more properly, with real separation between shadows, mid-tones and highlights. In essence, this tool now works exactly like Photoshop’s color balance. As with the latter, the color balance can be adjusted for shadows, mid-tones and highlights separately.

The Levels tool can now adjust not only the black point/white point, but the levels for each of the red, green and blue channels as well… separately, and at the same time.

Say hello to a new family member: The Channel tool can adjust hue, saturation and lightness separately for up to six color channels (red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta).

Just a quick reminder: Valentine’s Day is around the corner – time for some flowers, candy and .. perhaps a few nice photos or greeting cards…? Phixr is your Valentine’s Day toolbox! Here just a very few samples, there is much more!

Upon public demand we included a “tilt-shift” effect, now found in Camera & Lens tools. Tilt-shift in our context means simulating an extremely shallow depth of field. More information can be found in Phixr’s help, long story short, here are a few examples (google can give you more, just search for “tilt shift”):

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Rotate: We added a new way of determining the angle. You can now “mark” the horizon, which will be exactly horizontal after rotating the image. Sounds complicated, but is really easy. Just draw a line into the left thumbnail in the rotation tool window.

Rotation made easy

You can now create images from scratch, for instance, for creating backgrounds (using eg. the gradient tool).

We have been working on a real bunch of new features in the last weeks, a part of which we have now released to the public. The news are:

A new tool to create color gradients. It is found in the “Geometric shapes” tool, which now has a “gradients” tab. You can choose from a zillions of options, like colors, shape, position, length and more. The angle and the length are specified by clicking into the middle thumbnail, clicking and thereby drawing a yellow line (as depicted in the image below). The angle of the line will be the angle of the gradient, its length will be the length of the gradient. This tool is mainly for creating backgrounds for other photos (which can later be put into the background with the “Collage” tool), but gradients can also be a nice decoration inside photos:

The gradient tool window

A gradient sample

Another sample

Yet another one

The “Collage” tool, which is for mixing photos into one another, has been enhanced. In the past, it could make a selectable color transparent. However, the results were kind of “harsh”, because the tool didn’t soften the edges. Now, the tool can anti-alias (soften) the edges, and more: The option of also making similar colors to the selected one transparent is more flexible. You can set a criterion for what is considered “similar” based on hue, lightness, color components, etc. In the example below, we mixed one of Phixr’s sample images into another, making some green color tone transparent, and thereby essentially eliminating the background of the flower.

"Collage" sample

Speaking of color: The color picker has a new feature, too. You can now not only select a color from the color spectrum, but also one from the photo. The little “injection needle” to the right switches between the spectrum and a thumbnail of the photo.